Gray Harbor Discussion

[Cupcake]

Now I can't seem to access the chat feature on the website. Anyone else have this, or is it just me again?

[Tomorrow]

@Cupcake Broken from here too.

[krmbm]

Uh, here too, actually. Checking with @faraday on this one, since it was working fine yesterday. <.<

[faraday]

@Cupcake @Tomorrow There seems to be a bug with the web chat if you don't have any page conversations. Will get a fix out for that soon. In the mean time, if you just page somebody in-game (or have them page you), I think the error will go away. (or not; stay tuned)

[krmbm]

@Cupcake @Tomorrow It should be reachable again.

@faraday saves the day!

[Rinel]

@Tinuviel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

Which, I mean... makes sense. WIthout clarification, it does come across as a bigoted thing to do. I asked on this board a while ago if not allowing trans characters would make me a bigot. The answer here was a resounding yes, even though the sensible answer is no.

Uh. I mean, I don't think it makes you a bigot per se, but as a trans person I'd certainly be wondering why you'd decided not to allow people like me to exist as PCs in your game.

I mean, I almost always RP as a cis woman, so it's not like my RP would be stymied... but I'd certainly be a little concerned.

@Ghost said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

Not a lot of trans people were in the WW1 trenches

Not a lot of openly trans people, no.

ETA: I'm necroing this because I just submitted an app and was interested in what people had to say and then suddenly OH GOD TRANSSEXUALS WITHOUT LEGS

[Tinuviel]

@Rinel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

Uh. I mean, I don't think it makes you a bigot per se

That was literally the point of the conversation, yes.

[Rinel]

@Tinuviel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Rinel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

Uh. I mean, I don't think it makes you a bigot per se

That was literally the point of the conversation, yes.

The reason I said per se is because it's very hard for me to imagine a situation in which trans people wouldn't exist. I suppose one with magical transitioning, a la The Craft Sequence, might fit the bill, but even then there is the pre-transition experience--and that's only talking about transsexuals, not nonbinary people.

[Tinuviel]

@Rinel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

it's very hard for me to imagine a situation in which trans people wouldn't exist

Totally fictional and not at all bound by reality ones?

ETA: And ultimately it's not about whether they exist or not, it's about the fact that they're usually played so goddamn poorly if not outright fetishistically that I don't want to bother dealing with that shit.

So the point is that an action might seem bigoted but isn't. The exact group being slighted isn't relevant to the question.

[surreality]

@Rinel This is kinda what I was thinking... that the only situation where it might not is if someone automagically manifested whatever they felt (including non-binary options and completely fantastical ones) just by feeling it in the first place.

[Rinel]

@Tinuviel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

So the point is that an action might seem bigoted but isn't. The exact group being slighted isn't relevant to the question.

I think we kind of are relevant if we want to play someone like us, my dude.

[Jeshin]

I think @Tinuviel is saying whether he excluded red heads, irish people, black people, gay people, etc etc. That the specific group excluded doesn't matter to the question of whether excluding a group makes the game owner and/or staff bigoted.

For example lets say you were doing China in the rise of the Han Dynasty. You would presumably exclude certain non-historical groups. Lets say you're going Tolkien. Certain physical features are associated with certain kingdoms/areas which have allegiances to dark powers or not. Does not waiving those associations make the game staff bigoted? Shadows of Isildur had a complaint about that once.

EDIT - Or in his proposed example it appears he's excluding a group because of the fetishization of the group and the lack of respect the average player gives to their roleplay?

[Kanye Qwest]

@Jeshin ok but there is no setting which would stop the people there from being trans/gay/nonbinary. Those comparisons do not work.

[Jeshin]

@Kanye-Qwest

So excluding trans/non-binary people would make the staff or owner bigoted because no pre-existing setting exists which could justify that decision?

Excluding groups based on the work of Tolkien does not make the staff or owner bigoted?

^ I think this is the basic question of where do you cross the line and where are you alright. It's not a defense of doing it just answering where the community thinks it's acceptable and where it's wrong.

[Kanye Qwest]

@Jeshin said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Kanye-Qwest

So excluding trans/non-binary people would make the staff or owner bigoted because no pre-existing setting exists which could justify that decision?

Excluding groups based on the work of Tolkien does not make the staff or owner bigoted?

^ I think this is the basic question of where do you cross the line and where are you alright. It's not a defense of doing it just answering where the community thinks it's acceptable and where it's wrong.

That's not what I think. I think you should find better comparisons.

[Jeshin]

@Kanye-Qwest

I'm open to better comparisons, do you have any?

[Sparks]

@Jeshin said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

I think @Tinuviel is saying whether he excluded red heads, irish people, black people, gay people, etc etc. That the specific group excluded doesn't matter to the question of whether excluding a group makes the game owner and/or staff bigoted.

I think the issue here is that from a game owner's standpoint, it's "I feel <concept X> is played poorly/fetishized/overused, therefore I shall forbid it on game-balance grounds and grounds of taste." And while there are players who do play trans characters very well, and use that aspect of the character to give them genuine depth, I can't deny that there are also players out there who also do borderline-insulting fetishy things with trans characters. (And lesbian characters. And intersexed characters. And nonbinary characters. And redheads. And...)

But to someone whose RL identity falls into <concept X>, seeing something like "no lesbian characters will be allowed on the game" or "no trans characters will be allowed on the game" is probably going to feel like a rejection of the player themselves, regardless of whether that exclusion is made with what the game owner believes is the best intentions. It will still often put a player on the defensive; "I'm trans iRL. You feel people like me don't have a place in this narrative?" or something similar.

People probably aren't going to find common ground here, because they're looking at a thing from two completely different angles. It's like a statue in a museum; two people can be looking at the statue at the same time, but if one person's standing in front of the statue and looking at the face/chest, they're going to have a different perception of the statue than the person standing behind it (and who can't see the face) does.

[ZombieGenesis]

Maybe I'm off and I don't know why I'm throwing an opinion into this anyway BUT it seems that it's more "we don't allow this type of character because they are problematic, not because we dislike them." If I were to make a comparison I would say it would be like a superhero game not allowing anthropomorphic animals not because they hate the ninja turtles but because they know that, should they allow them, the types of players this type of character generally draws would cause a number of problems including not portraying the character type appropriately and possibly offending people with their portrayal of said character type.

[Auspice]

@Sparks said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

if one person's standing in front of the statue and looking at the face/chest, they're going to have a different perception of the statue than the person standing behind it (and who can't see the face) does.

here for dat statue ass

[Roz]

@Sparks Yeah. It kind of reminds me a bit of the situation with Tilda Swinton's casting in Dr. Strange. Where the director was like, "We didn't want to have a racist caricature for the Ancient One steeped in orientalism, so we...rewrote the character to be white instead." And man, Tilda Swinton is fucking awesome in every role she plays and there's no denying that, but that reasoning was still super bullshit on the director/movie team's part. (Guys, you don't reduce racist portrayals of things by...just making characters white instead.)

But if you, for instance, make a blanket ban on trans characters because of disrespectful or fetishized portrayals, and then have a player roll in to peek at your game who is actually trans IRL and see that, I cannot imagine that not feeling like shit even if the intentions were meant to be good ones. Because now you're in a situation where it's like, "Listen, we barred this concept that is part of your RL because people weren't respectful, and now you, person for whom this is an aspect of your real life, also can't include it or explore it." And, in the end, it basically sets it up as, "We just don't want to deal with the difficulty of telling people to be respectful with your identity, so we're just going to make a rule against it." That is: "This identity isn't worth our time to protect" swiftly becomes "You are not worth our time to protect."